1/22/08

I hate Fast Zombies.

Let's get something straight. Zombies should shuffle. They should walk with their hands straight out from their bodies. They should be easy to avoid, and easy to riddle with bullets. They are allowed to be relentless, hungry, and almost impossible to kill, sure -- but they shouldn't be fast. That just freaks me right the hell out.

Other things zombies* should definitely not be allowed to do:

(1) Climb walls and trees and poles like coked-up chimpanzees.(2) Be completely hairless and in better shape than Will Smith who is also completely hairless.(3) Unhinge their jaw and roar like a lion right before they run at you full speed and rip your throat out.(4) Be more than 1/4 vampire.(5) Be smart.

As you can probably surmise, we saw I am Legend last night. If you think the zombies in 28 Days Later were fast, I am here to say that you are sadly mistaken. I will bet money that the zombies I saw last night would kick major ass in a zombie triathlon against those UK zombies, if in fact you could reliably get zombies to bike and swim. They obviously have the running part more than covered.

Maybe if we replaced biking and swimming with climbing and killing, we could actually get this thing off the ground in time for Beijing -- although I did do a quick google search on 'Chinese zombies' and from what I could see, they appear to be a zombie-free nation.

OK, I'm off to my next class with the rest of the zombies. Luckily, they are of the slow-moving, over-eating, techie-geek persuasion, and I think I can move faster than most of them. Wish me luck.

[note: From reading the comments, I realized that my generic use of the term "zombies" might be slightly at odds with the traditional voodoo-reanimated corpse that is controlled, puppet-like, by the sorcerer/priest who raised it from the dead. So be it. Whatever these things were supposed to be -- I like the term "zompires" -- they were scary-fast bastards.]

*Or any other "virally-mutated" creatures, like those over at humor-blogs.com.

See, the thing is, this new generation of "zombies" aren't even ACTUAL ZOMBIES, they are just all sick and crap with some kind of weird viruses (depending on the location).

If they had actually taken the time and put in the effort to DIE before becoming zombies, then I am sure they would be much slower and behave like your traditional undead folks ought to behave.

But no... zombies not even taking the time to properly die cannot really be expected to know how to behave in the steps after that.

To be fair to I AM LEGEND... in the book, they were just vampires, not zombies. This is in no way suggesting you should read the book, because it was a steaming pile of offal. I'm just saying, the movie took some much needed liberties with it.

I hate to break it to you, but the "zombies" in I Am Legend are really full blown vampires. At least, according to the graphic novel. The problem is that the movie kind of follows a similar pattern as that of zombie films, so we assume they are zombies. They're not. Plus, you can only make so many good films about slow moving zombies with out just repeating the last one. They needed to do something to break new ground. Maybe, that's why they never actually say the word "zombie" in zombie films...

I wish that you had posted this blog about two weeks ago, as I do not enjoy movies that contain zombies (creatures/whatever) or intend to frighten you. So after my boyfriend had suggested this movie, I was not impressed to discover, while watching the film, that it contained many aspects of the things I DON'T want to watch. Needless to say, he owes me a REALLY horrible chick flik after this one.

Now I know what my husband meant when he said, after seeing it by himself, "You'd-a hated it." I'm not sure if he meant because of the Zompires, or Will Smith. From the trailer, I found myself only caring that nothing should happen to his dog.

You can't kill a loyal dog in a movie? Explain Old Yeller. While true, it was probably the most depressing movie I've ever seen, and I couldn't stop crying for days afterwards, it was still undeniably a great movie. And a dog doesn't get much more loyal than fighting off a rabid wolf near a fairly large fire in order to save its owner. RIP Old Yeller, RIP

I tried not to mention the dog. It made me cry during the movie, it made me cry after the movie, and it still makes me cry when I think about it. I agree. YOu just can NOT kill a loyal dog in a movie!!

Nancy - I don't think it's the slowness, it's the fact that even though they are slow, no matter how fast you run, they'll still catch up to you eventually, 'cos you have to rest. It's so much more sinister. If you escape a fast moving thing, you've escaped it. With a zombie, it's still on your trail... you just can't see it yet...

Sheildmaiden - Zompires! Awesome. I'm going to be using that.

As for the movie, not bad, but I felt that is should have ended when he was in the 4WD being attacked from all sides. From that point on, it kind of went downhill a little. Then it went downhill alot.

I unfortunately knew that this movie was a re-make of a 60's B-movie classic, so I was expecting more thrill, less horror.

All I want to point out is that Will Smith - and I'm not a huge fan - deserves every award they give out in LaLa Land for the expressions that crossed his face in the dog's last scene. That was acting you don't see in thrillers or horror films. Awesome.

I read the Matheson story a long time ago, and remembered them as virus infected/vampires, but definitely didn't picture them like this. The plot was a lot different too. Oh well. It was enjoyable, for what it was.

Zombies, vampires, warlocks and witches,Sends my mind into nervous twitches.Since watching “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte” as a little child,I vowed not to watch anything scary that would set my mind a wild.It can conjure up creepy, insane, murderous things on its own behalf.So I watch only warm, fuzzy, touchy shows that make me laugh!

Ha ha, "The Holiday", yeah, that was a piece of poop. I wanted to stuff Cameron Diaz in a sack and toss her out into a field so no one would have to hear the dialogue that passed for "thinking out loud".

I am Legend was the saddest movie ever, I cried during the whole thing because the guy was just so lonely. The creatures were neat but way too powerful.

Funny how this movie creeped my husband out, the man who loves Resident Evil and everything horror, but it didn't bother me at all, and I'm the horror-phobic in the house! It did bother me when the dog died though

Do you think the slower zombies are the problem with the California freeways? Perhaps they didn't teach them that the fast lane is on the right. Or maybe, the California zombies know this, but the zombies moving into California (traditionally slow ones) do not.

Thanks! Ha ha...The Holiday...perfect! And the boyfriend reads your blog too...so now he's screwed. Poor b@st@rd! As for the dog...we sat down to dinner with friends the other night to the conversation starter of "Would you have followed your dog into THAT?"

And yup, that ending..? I say...have the dog turn on him IN SUV...and "scene". The end.

Seriously, though...there were good bits...the way he lived...all details covered. And I enjoyed the Bob Marley speach near the end.

My husband refused to see The Shawshank Redemption because 'there's prison rape in it'. He wouldn't watch Oz, simply said, "That show? Shawshank city." Shawshank became code in our house for things you don't want to see depicted. I think I'm going to have to call a Shawshank on pets dying in any movie, 'no animals were harmed' declarations notwithstanding.

Just wanna say I saw I'am Legend on a hajj copy dvd for 2 bucks ya it was not all that good, and that pic of the nerd fest defnitely scary i noticed guys with back packs and even might have saw one guy with those things that keep your glasses on around his neck, I think those are the guys you gotta worry about. If you really want to see a movie that totally sucks ass see southland tails let me ruin it for you cuz its dumb the Rock dies, Stiffler grabs his dimension selfs hand and collapse the 4th dimension cuz hes a pimp and pimps don't commit suicide. Ya!

God Dammit! Again, funny. I agree though, fast zombies are for the birds. What ever happened to the zombies that slowly shuffled forward and let you shoot them in the head until you ran out of bullets and were forced to try and run until cornered by their unstoppable numbers and either were able to bash your way through or eventually sucumbed to the bite of the brain gobling undead and became one yourself?

Yeah, those damn zombies in that movie were pretty freaky; I wouldn't be going out at night either. Plus, they've got full use of the fitness centers for free! No wonder their in great shape. But like I wrote in a post awhile back on zombies...why are the dead always angry and in the need to kill when they come back to life? I'm thinking the afterlife might not be up to par with what we were thinking...

Wow... it's like someone wrote down my worst fear and decided to discuss it! That movie looked WAY to freaky, although the humor in this blog has made me a little less afraid of those awful things. (seriously, terrified I'm going to get attacked by zombies while walking home at night... I think it's a sickness)

If you want to see fast zombie's watch the movie 30 days of night, trust me, those are fast zombies and scary to the point it made a lady in the theater get sick and we had to pause the movie to clean the theater half way through

I've decided. If I come back as a zombie, I'm coming back as a fast zombie, but I'm going to pretend to be slow... then when my prey turns its back to start running, I'll leap ahead and jump on its back and chomp its brains out.

Fast zombies are to horror films what fast food is to American cuisine.

These kids these days wouldn't appreciate a good ol' slow zombies keep coming and coming until they overwhelm you not with speed orbrains but just with sheer numbers kind movie.

The extend-o-jaw phenomenon is an outgrowth, I believe, of The Mummy, which was a great bad B-movie film of the 90's. Ever since then, scary thins have had too-big mouths because it's easy to do with computer graphics.

I wrote a draft of a screenplay about zombie snails, but I can see that it's never going o get off the ground.

Well, fast zombies are the coolest. They can be killed though, In the remake of Dawn of the Dead the fast ones have to be killed with a head shot, but in 28 days later the fast ones can be killed with any lethal wound. The ones in dawn of the dead are the worst kind, but they can still be killed, a team of 5 or so with proper weapons and some basic education on military stategy could survive. But the slow zombies dont make sense, because if they eat brains well then not many people would be changing into zombies because their brains would already be eaten, oh and if they ate their victims whole there would be no one to turn into zombies either....see? Maybe someone can explain things clearer if i'm wrong. The closest thing I think would be some kind of altered rabies like virus that makes people attack each other, but they still would not eat each other, but the bites would spread infection, yet the infected would only live a few days until they starved to death. Thr Day of the Dead remake was dumb but the airborne virus is not a bad idea. So it seems that zombies would ruin the story if they ate brains or human flesh cause' there would be very few attack victims whom did not get devoured or their brains eaten. But if the Zombies only attacked their victims maybe with bites,scratches, and punches, then that person could become infected right after the attack (few seconds or so) because if infection took to long there would be nothing left to infect. But ther is still the problem of the zombies starving after a couple days, anyone have any suggestions about all this?

You weren't looking carefully enough for the chinese zombies, there are chinese zombies but instead of shuffling or running, they hop... i am serious, the hop. although this information may be from some old chinese scary movie i saw when i was little, meaning it could be zombies from around 50 to 20 years ago.

Maybe thats because...they are not zombies. Neither were the 28 days later "zombies". They both are actually a generic term I've come to think of (and are sometimes reffered to) "Infected" they are meant to be alot like zombies, in infecting people, but not undead. See Left 4 Dead also.